Maths Olympiad Prep

Library / /23 of 40

Combinatorics Difficulty 6.2 National olympiad Prove it China

Given eight points A1,A2,,A8A_1, A_2, \dots, A_8 on a circle, determine the smallest positive integer nn such that among any nn triangles with vertices in these eight points, there are two which have a common side.

Solution

First, we consider the maximal number of triangles with no common side.
Consider the maximal number of triangles with no common side pairwise. There are C82=28C_8^2 = 28 chords by connecting eight points. If each chord only belongs to one triangle, then these chords can only form r283=9r \le \lfloor \frac{28}{3} \rfloor = 9 triangles with no common side pairwise. But if there are nine such triangles, then there are 27 vertices. So, there is one point in eight points, which is the common vertex of four triangles.

Figure 1

Suppose that point is A8A_8, then eight edges are connected to seven points A1,A2,,A7A_1, A_2, \dots, A_7. So, there must exist an edge A8AkA_8A_k, which is the common side of two triangles, which is a contradiction. So r8r \le 8.

On the other hand, when r=8r = 8, we can make such eight triangles, see figure. Denote the triangles by three vertices as: (1,2,8)(1, 2, 8), (1,3,6)(1, 3, 6), (1,4,7)(1, 4, 7), (2,3,4)(2, 3, 4), (2,5,7)(2, 5, 7), (3,5,8)(3, 5, 8), (4,5,6)(4, 5, 6) and (6,7,8)(6, 7, 8). So the minimal number of nn is 9.

Want a route through all this instead of an archive? The track puts 2,000 problems in a working order, from AMC 10 level to the IMO shortlist.

Source: MathNet, licensed CC-BY-4.0. Statement and solution reproduced as published; topic and difficulty added by this site.